Understudy Read Online Free Page A

down this one photo of my own head that I thought was really cute. She said people would see it and assume I’m fat. Like I even care about someone’s instant judgment of me.
    “I’m really sorry,” Maggie says, shifting on her feet. “I hope your case isn’t broken.”
    “Not your fault.” I turn my phone over, checking for scratches but my Hello Kitty protective case has done a fine job. “I’m the idiot who wasn’t paying attention.”
    She laughs nervously. “Are you trying out for mathletes?”
    “What?”
    “Guess not. Try outs are today. I mean why else would you still be here after school?”
    “It’s the first day of play rehearsal,” I say, still wondering why she’d think I would be dorky enough to try out for a club of math-obsessed geeks. I’m not even that good at math.
    “I auditioned for that,” she says. “I wanted to be the main character but Ms. Barlow said I was too fat.” She gives a disdainful scowl toward her gut and shrugs. “Oh well.”
    “If it helps, she also said I was too fat.”
    She lifts an eyebrow, squishes her lips to the side and appraises me with a smile. “That does help. Cool phone cover, by the way.” She takes out her cell phone and shows me her Hello Kitty case that’s the same as mine. I would have never pegged her for a Hello Kitty girl, since she plays sports and loves math and all.
    I leave her to her mathletes try out and head to the auditorium. Members of the cast and stage crew hang out on stage and in the front row seats. I can’t find Margot or my aunt in the crowd so I chill on the edge of the stage waiting for some kind of direction. I also don’t see Derek, but I don’t look for him.
    I feel so stupid for being all flirty and smiling like an idiot around Derek the two times I had seen him. He’s a criminal. He spent half the school year in juvenile detention, which is basically prison for teens. He’s just a loser with an anger problem who will probably end up in real prison one day. How could I have been so stupid?
    And why does he have to be so hot?
    Margot’s voice filters in from backstage, and you don’t have to be her best friend to know she’s angry. A few students jump at her sudden shriek and one girl says, “Is Margot ever not bitching about something?” Laughter fills the auditorium. I get up and walk across the stage, pushing my hands through layers of thick velvety curtains to find my way backstage. It smells like old wood and an antique store back here.
    Ms. Barlow stands next to a set of ropes and pulleys, clipboard in her hand and classic annoyed look on her face. Margot jumps when she hears my footsteps but then relaxes when she sees it’s just me. “He’s a loser,” she says to my aunt. “You can’t let him be in the play. It has to be against the law or something.”
    “He’s served his detention away from school and how he has to get fifty hours of volunteer work at school.” Ms. Barlow shakes her head. “Take it up with the principal. It’s out of my hands.”
    “I swear to god, if he touches me I’ll kill him.” Margot shoots me a look that could slice my script in half. “Wren, you better be careful. He’s a stagehand like you.”
    I nod, not knowing what to say; still feeling like someone has punched me in gut.
    Ms. Barlow instructs everyone (even us lowly stagehands) to sit in the front seats in the auditorium while she talks for an hour about how rehearsals will go, who does what, and what conduct is expected of us. She also slips in a few stories of her old Broadway acting days, and people seem excited about it, but not me because I’ve heard them a million times. Oddly, each time one of her stories are told, the grandeur of it gets a little bigger. I sit in the third row behind everyone else and stare at Derek, who is in the second row a few seats to my right. There is a wide birth of empty seats around him.
    His hair looks so cute from the back.
    I totally shouldn’t be thinking